individuals at Moog Music aren’t content simply making ridiculously fun synthesizers, iPad apps, and effects boxes for creative artists. The organization now’s dipping into percussion—it’s latest item, announced today, is a drum device called the Drummer From Another mom.

Well, wait. It’s not exactly a drum machine. It’s really a monophonic, semi-modular, analog percussion synthesizer. That is clearly a lot to unpack, but what you ought to understand is whenever you turn on the DFAM and commence twisting the knobs, it makes great synthetic drum and percussion sounds—deep throbs, hypersonic plinks, and every thing in between.

The DFAM is monophonic, so automatically, it could only output one sound at any given time. Meaning, it is possible to arrange it to try out a kick drum pattern, or a snare drum pattern, or a tom-tom pattern, not all three at once (unless you utilize the area cables, but I’ll enter into that in somewhat). Most drum devices are polyphonic; they may be able reproduce the noises a peoples drummer would make sitting behind a drum kit. The DFAM, being monophonic, is more restricted. But as any musician will inform you, with restrictions come greater possibilities for experimentation.

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I’ve spent some time using the DFAM before couple of weeks (Moog Music offered it being a DIY kit at its Moogfest meeting, and I also had been invited to solder one together in a workshop) and another of the great joys of the machine is the fact that you don’t really should know any single thing about drum development to begin getting some interesting tones from it. That’s mostly as it doesn’t look or work such a thing such as a regular drum device. It’s knobs and spot bays in which most drum machines might have tap-pads and LCD screens. Anybody also somewhat knowledgeable about steps to make a synth go “bleep” will feel at home.

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After you get a quick lay of land, it is possible to quickly start building patterns. Dial in good starting sound, then run it through DFAM’s sequencer—it’s eight actions, and every action features its own velocity and pitch controls. As your selected sound bounces through the steps, you could make it go up and down in pitch, or grow louder or get softer. For the synth with the capacity of creating only 1 sound at a time, it’s an expressive and dynamic palette.

“I don’t call it a drum machine,” says Moog musical senior equipment engineer Steve Dunnington, the DFAM’s lead designer. “it generally does not actually say ‘drum’ anywhere about it.” Dunnington began sketching out ideas the DFAM at the conclusion of 2016, then had several prototypes before bringing the DIY version to Moogfest in-may 2017. Afterwards hobby-style kit went over well with seminar attendees, Dunnington and his team start creating a version of the DFAM for the customer market. Now, you can buy one for $599.

Towards funny title. If you are a Moog fan, you then find out about the Mother 32. It is a semi-modular synth similar in function toward Drummer From Another Mother, and the two machines are the same form and size—hence the motherly love within the naming. They could be connected together via their matching cable area bays so that they sync up and run at the exact same tempo. A typical usage instance is to write a bass line regarding mom, then sync up a DFAM (or three) to perform your robotic rhythm part. The DFAM also has inputs, in order to plug an additional tool, synth, or sampler and use that to trigger your drum sounds. There are always a ton of options, no right or incorrect solution to utilize them.